They wanted a sympathetic victim but they had to make do with what they had.

From How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada After ICE Came Looking for Her by Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz.  The subheading is Ranjani Srinivasan’s student visa was revoked by U.S. immigration authorities. That was just the start of her odyssey.

It is typical of the New York Times and NPR writing style under Republican administrations.  Find a case where someone has ostensibly suffered under a repulsive Republican policy and use that as the foundation to write an oblique critique of the administration.  

It rarely turns out well.  The victim almost always turns out to be an advocate, an activist, a grifter, an individual whose choices and decisions directly led to the negative outcome, etc.  You read the report which is supposed to make you angry about the policy and protective of the victim and end being mad about the deceptiveness of the NYT and NPR and with a sense that there was never any there there.  The "victim" was the architect of their own fate.

This is yet another instance of this journalistic formula.  

But it is odd.  

They want a middle aged Indian woman (37) who was an architectural graduate student at Columbia University to be the poster child of a victim of Trump's efforts to enforce immigration law, to hold universities accountable for tolerating violent antisemitism, and to deport those who are in the country illegally.

The oddity is that the article, written in complete sympathy of Ranjani Srinivasan, also makes it very plain why she was being deported.  At first, as you read, you can imagine how she might simply have been the innocent victim of a poorly executed Kafkaesque process.  But the more you read, the more obvious it becomes why it was reasonable.  

One can still feel pity for a fellow human who has had her privileges disrupted, while still having a clear comprehension why it was reasonable for them to be revoked.

The harsh case against Ranjani Srinivasan is right there in the reporting even though Ferré-Sadurní and Aleaziz do their best to obscure it.

Ranjani Srinivasan:

Was in the United States at 37 pursuing further graduate studies at Columbia University.  Kind of old for a student.  Definitely not a hot headed youth.

Srinivasan was arrested in 2024 for participating in Pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas/antisemitic protests at Columbia University which culminated in the occupation and damage of one of the University buildings.  Further, Columbia students were threatened and menaced during the protest.  

Srinivasan  further supported the Palestinian/Hamas/Anti-semtism activism on campus through "her activity on social media" which "had been mostly limited to liking or sharing posts that highlighted “human rights violations” in the war in Gaza. And she said that she had signed several open letters related to the war, including one by architecture scholars that called for “Palestinian liberation.”"

Srinivasan renewed her visa in late 2024 but did not disclose, as obligated to do, that she had been arrested and had had two court summonses.  

"The State Department has broad discretion to revoke student visas, which it typically does if someone overstays or the government discovers fraud; convictions and arrests can also lead to revocations."

Srinivasan subsequently had her student visa revoked for participating in Pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas /anti-semitic protests.

Columbia then withdrew "her enrollment from the university because her legal status had been terminated."

Srinivasan, along with her roommate, sought to deceive and evade Immigration officers when they attempted to make contact with her at her apartment.  

Srinivasan then self-deported herself to Canada rather than go through the process of attempting to refute the charges.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz do their best to create a victim but the facts as they report them seem to clearly support that Srinivasan conducted herself in a fashion inconsistent with the terms of her visa; the case appears strong that she supported pro-terrorist, anti-semitic activities on campus resulting in property damage and physical threats; she lied on her visa renewal; her visa was properly revoked; her enrollment in the university was properly revoked; and she chose to leave the country.

Ferré-Sadurní and Aleaziz give Srinivasan plenty of space to argue that she wasn't part of the protest at Hamilton Hall, she was just caught up there; that she was simply careless in not mentioning her arrest and summonses when she renewed her visa, and that her support for Palestine, Hamas and associated anti-semitic activities were merely mild forms of free speech.  

All of which sounds like the weak argument made by a five-year-old when caught drawing on the wall in crayon.  "It wasn't me, I wasn't there, I didn't mean to."  But she's 37, it was her, she was there, and she chose to support an enemy of the nation and undertake action threatening to the citizens of this nation.   As Ferré-Sadurní and Aleaziz reluctantly document.

And that's the oddness of this article.  They didn't have much to work with, they did their best to create a victim and it just doesn't work except for the most cursory of readers.  

I have to guess that they wanted a really sympathetic "victim" and this was the closest they could get to one.  But she just isn't really that close in terms of either "victimhood" or in terms of being sympathetic.